Climate Skeptics Misunderstand Us, Too

Climate Skeptics Misunderstand Us, Too

So recently, I’ve watched a few videos from the Heartland Institute conference on “Restoring the Scientific Method”—and it has been a fascinating experience.

I point you, for instance, to this session on public policy, and especially the Q&A starting at minute 56. (Also watch Marc Morano from minute 38 to minute 56, the dude is nothing if not entertaining.) Once the audience questions start coming for the panel, I was rather surprised to hear that most were basically about…uh, communism. And in response, the panelists—and especially Christopher Horner—were quite affirmative that the real reason that we, the “left,” want to restrict greenhouse gas emissions is that we want to hobble economies, redistribute wealth, and restrict individual freedoms.

“You can believe this is about the climate, and many people do,” said Horner. “But it’s not a reasonable belief.” Horner went on to argue that “it’s probably about what they’ve claimed they really want.” For many “luminaries” of the environment movement, Horner continued, “economic growth is not the cure, it’s the disease.”

Now, Morano and Horner have various pieces of “evidence” that they use to support their assessment—including out of context quotations. But I, too, have heard some environmentalists attack growth, and say that it is the real problem.

However, I do not believe in any sense that this is the mainstream view of those who want a cap-and-trade bill, whether they are President Obama, or Democratic senators, or the many corporations who supported such legislation—like GE and Duke Energy. Without economic growth, these companies could not maintain rising share prices, nor could they keep reporting rising earnings and annual dividend increases for their stockholders.

I can also speak for myself. If there’s anything I don’t like, it’s extremes—including on the left. I very much want companies to thrive and succeed—who else is going to create jobs?—but to me, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be regulated. I actually do believe that they should be regulated as little as is possible–so long as it is enough to preserve public health and the environment.

Moreover, it’s not surprising that I think this way—people of my generation in the U.S. don’t even have any direct experience with communism. It hasn’t been a significant force on the U.S. left for quite a long time. It’s something we’ve read about, certainly, but not something with which we associate.

So exactly what environmental left are Heartland acolytes talking about here? As far as I can tell, they’re simply shadowboxing.

I’ve often written about how those on my side do not understand the motivations of climate skeptics. They aren’t just driven by a quest for the corporate dole, for instance—they’re strong individualists who fear government control over choices and freedoms. I believe that ideology is therefore more powerful in driving climate skepticism than is money.

But it’s quite apparent that anti-environmentalists, like Horner, don’t understand us, either. We didn’t cook the science, and we don’t hate jobs, either. We just think that, because global warming is real, and because there are solutions to the problem will ultimately also help the economy, it’s a very good idea to kill two birds with one stone.

But now, having now cleared up the record, I’m quite sure that we won’t see this error any more in the future.

Previous Comments

My brother reminds me that “often” the cure is worse than the ailment. He concludes that changing nothing (e.g., continue with CO2 emissions) is wiser than going green in a big, fast hurry. This is the brother who had us composting in the mid-60s years before we had a garden that needed it. Not surprising he’s had a career in coal.

Of course it is not that difficult to imagine climate mitigation policy that takes money from the poor and gives it to the rich.

David Frum likes the idea of a carbon tax because it is more of a flat tax that the current progressive income tax model with different tax brackets (remember people with low income usually spend a greater percentage of that income on fossil fuels).

James Hansen’s tax and dividend policy proposal would also have this effect as everyone would get the same amount in their dividend cheques.

The carbon tax here in BC has been criticized as disadvantaging the poor.

And those are just a few examples. I am sure one could dig up more.

Also note, I am not saying this is a good thing, or a bad thing. Just that it is possible.

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the
industrialized civilizations collapse?
Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?”
- Maurice Strong,
founder of the UN Environment Programme

“The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society,
which is nature’s proper steward and society’s only hope.”
- David Brower,
founder of Friends of the Earth

“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of
saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have
an ecologically sound society under socialism.
I don’t think it is possible under capitalism”
- Judi Bari,
principal organiser of Earth First!

“The Earth has cancer
and the cancer is Man.”
- Club of Rome,
Mankind at the Turning Point

“The common enemy of humanity is man.
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up
with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming,
water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these
dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through
changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome.
The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
- Club of Rome,
premier environmental think-tank,
consultants to the United Nations

“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another
United States. We can’t let other countries have the same
number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US.
We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.”
- Michael Oppenheimer,
Environmental Defense Fund

“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
- Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment

“The only way to get our society to truly change is to
frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
- emeritus professor Daniel Botkin

“We are on the verge of a global transformation.
All we need is the right major crisis…”
- David Rockefeller,
Club of Rome executive member

“The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable,
indeed a sacred principle of international relations.
It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to
the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.”
- UN Commission on Global Governance report

“Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and
it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely.
Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well
suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature
of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected
representatives to make competent decisions at the right time.”
- Club of Rome,
The First Global Revolution

“Regionalism must precede globalism.
We foresee a seamless system of governance from
local communities, individual states, regional unions
and up through to the United Nations itself.”
- UN Commission on Global Governance

you forgot one of the lead authors in the 3rd? ipcc report: otto edenhoeffer(sp?) who said “one has to free oneself from the illusion that intl climate policy is environmental policy. climate change policy is about how we redistribute the worlds wealth”. pretty clear to me.

Way to take that out of context. That comment was in response to a comment pointing out that the Government funds all of Spencers research. In that sense, his comment was spot on, since he is paid with taxpayer money.

Since when was minimizing the role of government in science a bad thing? Why is it that all liberals seem to believe that government funding is somehow magically non-biasing? The sooner we get government out of science the better. And if you read the whole comment instead of taking it out of context, you can see that is Spencers point. http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/07/fundanomics-the-free-market-simplified/#comment-17605

Spencer is a climate scientist. His ideas about small government should never bias his opinion about the science. That is not what taxpayers pay him to do.
Sure, he’s welcome his small govt opinion, but that has nothing to do with the science.

Most mainstream scientists are loath to stray from strictly scientific comments, not wanting to be seen as biased in any way. That they speak in straight scientific lingo is what makes it so easy to misrepresent their comments to the public.

Case in point is the myth that CRU scientist Phil Jones stated that there was no global warming for 15 years. He said no such thing, but was speaking of the short time span that was not considered long enough to make assertions about temp trends. What he said was that there was not a 95% statistical trend in temperatures over such a short noisy time span, where short term noise can mask the long term signal.
The trend was actually somewhere between 90%-93% statistically significant.
The trend is now 95% statistically significant over the past 15 years.

This whole misrepresentation and flat out lie was spread all over the denialsphere and news media.

No, it was bratisla who posted only part of the quote and used it as evidence against mains stream scientists, when it was actually said by a skeptic, (Spencer)and prove that his ideology trumps his science.

was Roy Spencer, the scientist who made a big omission processing his satellite data, which erroneously showed a cooling. Then he turned into a prominent skeptic, on account of his great discovery that all the thermometers on earth and on weather balloons were wrong.

So yeah, he is proselitizing for his wrong view of science. Writing books. Getting lauded by the denier community.

No, that is not in his job description. A scientist is nothing like a legislator.

If John Cook’s political motivation is not apparent here, and apparently socialist, then I hope someone can explain his tone:

“A sustainabl­e society will require fairness (equity) and justice locally and globally, both within this generation and between our generation and future generations.” – John Cook and Hadyn Washington (“Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand,” 2011).

“Preventin­g the collapse of human civilizati­on requires nothing less than a wholesale transforma­tion of dominant consumer culture.” – John Cook and Hadyn Washington (“Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand,” 2011).

“Just because there a professor of something denying climate change does not mean it is not true, it is just that the professor is in denial. This is why one must make use of the prepondera­nce of evidence in science, the collective view.” – John Cook and Hadyn Washington (“Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand,” 2011).

“The collapse of world communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall during the 1980s added to the trend toward extremism. The Cold War was over and the peace movement was largely disbanded. The peace movement had been mainly Western-based and anti-American in its leanings. Many of its members moved into the environmental movement, bringing with them their neo-Marxist, far-left agendas. To a considerable extent the environmental movement was hijacked by political and social activists who learned to use green language to cloak agendas that had more to do with anti-capitalism and anti-globalization than with science or ecology. I remember visiting our Toronto office in 1985 and being surprised at how many of the new recruits were sporting army fatigues and red berets in support of the Sandinistas. ” - Patrick Moore (“Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout”, 2010)

“We’ve come to a point where we think, ‘Well, if I make money, then once I get the money I have the right to spend it any way I want.”” - David Suzuki (The Seventh Conference of the Parties, COP-7)

“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy”… “No. Climate change policy is about how “we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth….” – IPCC official, Ottmar Edenhofer, lead author if WG3, “Green Jobs”

My experience with lists of quotes like this one is that very often more than half of them are made up, or that they are quoted and misquoted wildly out of context. I have already googled a couple of them, but havent managed to track down an actual source. Just the same list posted endlessly.

Now I am not in possession of the amount of time to be able to check these myself, it being late here, but as you are the one who posted them, I put it to you that you have a responsibility to verify each and every one of these quotes. If they are all true, then fine. Ill quite happily stand beside you and jump up and down and laugh at the more extreme positions myself. Otherwise you should take them down. And apologize to those concerned. In writing.

I specifically referenced all but my last quote. The John Cook quotes I took directly from my own underlined copy of his book. *All* of the specific references for the anonymous poster’s big list of quotes are *included* at the very top of quote page he linked to.

Are you being merely skeptical of this quote offering or are you really just in denial? Remember, one can’t complain about a single bad datum, a single quote: you must adhere to the collective view, listen to the preponderance of evidence that Green Bank profiteers like Gore and shake down groups like Greenpeace are currently GINO (“Green In Name Only”).

Here is a wonderful layout of Gore’s new ocean view mansion with six fireplaces:

Is exposure of crass hypocrisy of the worst kind also “shopworn denier talking points”? Are those not really the palatial toys of the very figurehead of the contemporary environmental movement, the movement *you* so earnestly believe in? Are you *really* surprised that your message isn’t being received with open arms by those you tell must turn heir romantic first dates into *this* based on supercomputer predictions of the future?!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqnsIiTUgds

Here are a few more of the contemporary AGW movement’s most adamant gurus, which I sincerely suspect represent mere differences in extremity rather than differences in kind of what drives the subconscious of many a truly miserable, envious, envy-avoiding and hateful person into lock step anti-capitalist, meaning anti-corporation, meaning anti-free-assembly and thus anti-free-choice activism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmPzLzj-3XY

http://i.min.us/ibubmk.jpg

It was the GINO movement’s scuttling of the Atomic Age that stuck us with dangerous old reactor designs in a high emissions world! Where is *my* apology for this situation, enlightened ones? Can you also offer me my time and lost income back and compensate me for all of the opportunity costs in the romantic, small business and physical fitness arenas due to the time and effort I have had to put in over the last few years to stop you from using the Net to spread lies about the weather? And can you shut the heck up about “oil money” unless *you* can provide a referenced link that connects such money to any of the skeptical blog owners listed on the WUWT blogroll?

James Hoggan’s book, the goal of which is to connect skepticism to oil money, doesn’t even mention WUWT and gives four technical but not financial pages to ClimateAudit.org, the two most influential skeptical sites of all. Instead he grabs hold of Tim Ball (who?…some lecture circuit dude in Canada) and another guy I’d never heard of except maybe in passing. The idea that skeptics are Fox News and think tank drones is silly since skeptics are nerdy science guys, mostly early retired (I’m an exception at 45). They don’t talk much about politics on skeptical blogs, though the election is being discussed here and there. They talk again and again about one thing: their exasperated perception that science has been corrupted within a tight group of activist climatologists who continue to rewrite climate history in true Orwellian fashion to make current trends appear alarming and utterly unnatural.

Basically, you guys have been had by a bunch of charlatans and gurus who are cashing in on a scam.

Australia’s carbon taxing prime minister, Julia “No Carbon Tax” Gillard, is a member of the Australian Fabian Society, dedicated to Fabianism, the focus on the advancement of socialist ideas through gradual influence and patiently promoting socialist ideals to intellectual circles and groups with power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Fabian_Society

” For many “luminaries” of the environment movement, Horner continued, “economic growth is not the cure, it’s the disease.”

He is right it is the disease. Continual indefinite,m economic as well as population growth and resource consumption is a mathematical and physical impossibility. Ressources are finite as is the ability of the environment to absorb and/or process the products of consuming resources (also known as its carrying capacity). It is something that all speciees that undergo rapid population growth have to come to terms with eventually. It usually results in either a population crash followed by a level of population that is more in equilibrirum with its environment, or extinction of the species.

Of course the rightwing free-market worshipping neo-liberals hate this fact. It goes against everthing they believe in. It implies that there are fundamental limits to the capitalist economic model and markets, that are insurmountable. They are stupid for it.

Yes his middle name was Robert but he is generally known as Thomas Malthus.

You have just provided jet another example of ignorance.

Whatever, Malthus, like Adam Smith is oft’ misquoted or misrepresented.

Now if all humans on earth continue to aspire to the American Dream then we are all in for a nightmare. The electrical power required alone would fry the planet, let alone the associated environmental problems. Whatever we would hit various resource problems long before that as we are already mining the Earth’s resources and that leads to the kind of ‘Collapse’ described by Jared Diamond in his book of that name.

“The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost 150 to 250 cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2002 and 2006, while Antarctica lost about 152 cubic kilometers (36 cubic miles) of ice between 2002 and 2005.” http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

“If you believe there are no trends there, you are an extremely stupid person.”

You are not even responding to the content of my presentation. My whole point is that there *is* a trend, one that does not change in the most recent decade or two, thus meaning claims of recent surges above and beyond the natural trend of sea level, T and ice extent don’t even pass the laugh test. Such blind rudeness pegs you as being merely baldy partisan and obviously suffering from rage promoted by propaganda within the usual green/lefty bubble in which skeptics are seen as inhuman buffoons despite the consistent studies that show that greater scientific literacy leads to *less* belief in AGW claims, not more.

There are two driving forces amongst the True Believers: the Far Left and the Rent Seekers. Yes, Virginia there are still communists out there but basically anyone who shares the hatred of capitalism and the principles of Western civilization can be counted on to embrace the CAGW myth. For whatever reason they hate all of the breeding and consuming the masses engage in. They are the useful idiots that the Rent Seekers depend on.

The Rent Seekers are the real driving force behind Alarmism. Bureaucrats of all nations and especially the U.N. Environmental organizations and NGOs of all stripes. Academia and their insatiable thirst for grants. Crony capitalists like the contemptible thieves at GE, who, like Enron, base profits on manipulating the government first. Third world leaders who see the opportunity for billions of Western profits being redirected to their bank accounts. Er, I mean to their economies.

I don’t believe there is a conspiracy in this so much as a whole lot of crooks have noticed that the bank has left a back door open. Funny how the people who are so quick to see the Koch brothers hiding in every shadow somehow never doubts the intentions of these people or comic book antichrists like George Soros.

On cue a Reaver darkly warns me to “make my obscene profits” while I can. See? Hates the profit motive. Obviously some form of commie or “progressive.” (A “progressive” is someone who is too much of a pussy to admit they’re a communist.)

Capitalism as it has existed over the last 35 years has provided a huge benefit to a small group of people. It has been based on extreme consumption, debt and asset bubbles.

It does seem from the growing refinement of climate science that we have a paradox- continue consuming, which is has been based on a surging need for energy- which continues to use large amount of fossil fuels, but has seen C02 rise 10,000 times faster then the last great global warming event, the PETM in the late Paleocene and Eocene of 6 degrees C 56 million years ago.

It seems tragic to the ultra capitalists that their party will likely end in the next two decades.

Their hatred of government will come back to haunt them, as a nation shattered by climate change does not look to HP or Exxon-Mobile to a climate in turmoil.

It should all be fun to watch- but if you live in the USA- south of the great lakes- west of the Appalachians - in the deep south, great plains- and southwest- it may become a very unpleasant place to live.

What profits?! Where? Oil stocks are going nowhere, which is about the only way I know how I might profit from oil money. How do I profit instead of lose profit from my hours of work each week, often each day, being a skeptic? You believe everything you read in conspiracy theory books about skepticism being guided by oil companies?! Huh? Really? That’s just how simple it is?

How does it feel to be an active member of a hate group? Righteous? I do wonder. Superior, certainly. Hostile and angry, I imagine. Bad for your heart, that. How many people or groups have become rich via AGW skepticism? Yet Hewlett of Hewlett Packard recently gave $0.9 *billion* dollars to a AGW activist organization! Gore in 2010 announced a $300 million pro-AGW educational campaign. The bulk of skeptics are eccentric techie guys of retirement age, in fact, and are self-financed. The big bucks nowadays is in green energy speculation fueled by billions of dollars a year of government grants and subsidies. Alas, the usual lefty derangement syndrome stops you from seeing any of this. The profiteers are on your side of the fence, all trying to out do Enron, the original carbon trading firm.

Same crap by the same denier ideologues. Paranoid reds under yer beds type stuff.

The deniers at Heartland & the deniers here on this blog still cant answer this question that I have posed so many times. If its all about communism, socialism, or destroying jobs or businesses etc or whatever other paranoid fantasy you guys have, then why have the conservative governments of N.Z, U.K, Germany, France or Denmark to name a few all implemented a carbon tax & are actively promoting greentech?………………..crickets?

The astroturfer sock puppets in here cant answer that can they? To answer that would be to concede that either

a) They are ignorant rusted on conservatives from either Australia, Canada or the USA, who are just parroting whatever their political party says while they choose to ignore the science.

OR

b) They are paid shills. Paid to come here & say whatever to oppose legislation that would affect the income of the companies they represent.

Skeptics, who are just poor duped fools that have been easily conned or havnt read widely enough do not even realise that by going green tech, it will actually help the economy like Chris Mooney says. Countries like the USA who have serious employment & debt problems would benefit enormously from green tech. Its employment would dwarf fossil fuel employment & provide the next boom the USA& the world needs.

Deniers on the other hand are either defending their politics or the company they work for & care little about the science or the competition.

Oh yeah & about that communism. Not that I actually advocate it or want it, but isnt China on its way to becoming the next super power & all the capitalist countries are in debt to them? Business over there seems to be doing just fine. The irony.

“china’s capitalist ways and read before you embarras urself any further”

Wow, there are some seriously uneducated people on these blogs. No wonder so many low educated people are opposed to AGW.

China is a capitalist ways? China is a communist country. The communist party just celebrated its 60th year of COMMUNIST rule!In case you were under a rock.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/world/asia/02china.html

You think having a single government with no democratic elections gives private enterprise the legal standing to do whatever they want? Yeah sure! The Chinese government allows business to thrive but only under their rules & regulations. There is no right of appeal.

Now thats got to hurt that not only are you wrong, but secondly, you didnt know China was a communist country & thirdly, the USA& most other western capitalist nations are in hock to them.

Now puhleeeeease, explain to me why the conservative govs of NZ, UK, Germany, France & Denmark have a carbon tax & are going nuts for green tech? More crickets………..? Where is the tin foil hat now?

No one ever accuses you crazies of being paid shills. That would imply that you were somehow effective in your argument. Be honest, Phil. You don’t need a shred of evidence to throw that shill line in there, do you? You just know in your heart, “Aaargh! All of these people who don’t agree with me! Someone must be paying them!” Heh. Zealot fail.

Why do you refer to skeptics as Astroturf? Does the fact that the right and libertarian factions in politics are exactly the ones that do *not* utilize paid protestors shipped in on buses with cookie cutter signs, whereas the left very much does utilize paid Astroturf campaigns have no influence on your view?

“If its all about communism, socialism, or destroying jobs or businesses etc or whatever other paranoid fantasy you guys have, then why have the conservative governments of N.Z, U.K, Germany, France or Denmark to name a few all implemented a carbon tax & are actively promoting greentech?………………..crickets?”

(1) N.Z. = Prime Minister John Key of the National Party won over the Labour Party in 2008. That is indeed conservative then. On climate, let’s check his views. Uh oh, “Commentators note that as recently as 2005, Key made statements indicating that he was skeptical of the effects and impact of climate change.” They abandoned a carbon tax but have a carbon trading scheme.

(2) U.K. = Prime Minister David Cameron of the Conservative Party. Yet this month The Guardian complained: “The fact that Cameron is prepared to consider abandoning legally binding targets tells us what we already know; his claim to be ‘the greenest government ever’ is completely false.” They have high energy taxes but no tax on carbon.

(3) Germany = Chancellor Angela Merkel is not conservative and the Social Democratic Party she is affiliated is one of the oldest Marxist socialist influenced political parties in the world. Germany really is green however, given their phasing out of nuclear power, though of course that will lead to more CO2 output, but it’s the thought that counts, right? They abandoned a carbon tax but do have carbon trading.

(4) France = President Nicolas Sarkozy defeated the Socialist party in 2007. His views on AGW are represented by his appointment of an outspoken climate-change skeptic to a French super-ministry of industry and innovation which drew strong protests from party colleagues and environmentalists. Claude Allègre argues that global warming is not necessarily caused by human activity. Putting him in charge of scientific research would be tantamount to “giving the finger to scientists”, said Nicolas Hulot, France’s best-known environmental activist. Last year they abandoned plans for a carbon tax.

(5) Denmark = Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen of their largest party, a pro-free-market socially liberal right-of-center party that sounds like classic liberalism in fact, has views are very pro-welfare as well, so he is certainly not a “conservative” but is in fact socialist. He firmly supports efforts to reduce CO2 emissions and has created a carbon tax in Denmark.

Phil M’s claims should not be taken at face value, I submit. His hatred of a perceived “other” prevents him from clearly seeing the world he lives in with other human beings who differ in their outlook, experience, temperament, intelligence, maturity, education and insight.

I’m from Alabama, and I think I spend a lot of time with the folks who are most easily taken advantage of by fossil PR. Our rhetoric should always be focused on those people. Everyone else pretty much agrees.

I always stick to the damage to human health and our economy–NOT the earth holistically or wildlife–when I talk about the trouble with global average temp increase. I also put the problem in the context of the progress of human civilization. I remind people of the way that large population (as opposed to supposed leftist boogeyman population control schemes), standard of living increase, and economic growth are flatly impossible without science and technology. I remind them that science and technology changes (i.e., progresses) over time. Communicate with people where they are.

“There is no freer man than one who relies upon the sun that falls on his roof or the wind that blows through his back yard.
”

Well, mine cost me $8k. In 5 years it will have paid for itself. Currently, instead of a power bill, I get around $600 BACK from the power company a quater. Please deniers, tell me a time when that will EVER happen under fossil fuels?

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

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